Mergers, Acquisitions and Divestitures

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    How Trump Could Make Larry Ellison the Next Media Mogul

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    For decades, Larry Ellison reveled in being the Silicon Valley executive who really knew how to have a good time. He spent as much as $200 million building a Japanese-inspired imperial villa near Palo Alto, Calif., bought the sixth-largest Hawaiian island and dated and married and divorced with never-ending zeal.Few paid much attention to exactly what his database company, Oracle, did. Sometimes, neither did Mr. Ellison. He did not show up for his keynote talk at Oracle’s annual convention in San Francisco in 2013 because he was on his yacht trying to win the America’s Cup, which he did. A biography about him was titled, “The Difference Between God and Larry Ellison: God Doesn’t Think He’s Larry Ellison.”With a fortune of $175 billion, there is not much left for Mr. Ellison to buy that would seriously dent his wallet. He broke a Florida record in 2022 when he purchased a 22-acre estate near Palm Beach — but at $173 million, the price was one-tenth of 1 percent of his wealth. He invested $1 billion in Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter that same year because, he said at the time, “it would be lots of fun.”Now 80 years old and married for the fifth or possibly the sixth time, Mr. Ellison is expanding his ambitions beyond having fun and surrounding himself with beautiful things. Following a path laid down by his friend Mr. Musk, who has at least six companies that feed off one another, Mr. Ellison also appears to be planning to grow his corporate empire.Oracle keeps emerging as a possible bidder for TikTok, the wildly popular video app that Congress has decreed needs to divest itself of its ownership by the Chinese internet company ByteDance or be banned in the United States. On Wednesday, President Trump plans to meet with top White House officials to discuss a new ownership structure for the app. The deadline for a deal is Saturday, though TikTok deadlines have come and gone before.Oracle almost became a minority owner of TikTok’s U.S. operations in 2020, along with Walmart, when concerns about the app’s data security ran rampant. A deal was negotiated where Oracle started storing the data of U.S. users on its cloud. Oracle would also own 12.5 percent of a new company, TikTok Global. The latter part, like many TikTok deals, never happened.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Trump Set to Meet With Top Aides to Decide TikTok’s Fate

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      President Trump plans to meet with top White House officials on Wednesday to discuss a proposal that could secure TikTok’s future in the United States, two people familiar with the plans said.Mr. Trump will consider a proposal for a new ownership structure for the popular video app, which is owned by the Chinese internet giant ByteDance. Lawmakers and other U.S. officials have argued that the app’s ties to China raise national security concerns, and a federal law that was passed last year requires TikTok to change its ownership or face a ban in the United States. The latest deadline for that ban is Saturday.The meeting is set to include Vice President JD Vance, whom Mr. Trump tapped to find an arrangement to save the popular app early in February, and other top officials, the two people said on the condition of anonymity. The new ownership structure, they said, could include Blackstone, the private equity giant, and Oracle, the technology company.The meeting is another twist in the long national saga of TikTok, which surged in popularity in the United States despite sustained and deep scrutiny in Washington and state capitals. Mr. Trump, who made repeated assurances that he wants to save the app, extended the deadline for a deal in January and suggested that he might do so again if a suitable plan was not reached by early this month.TikTok did not immediately return a request for comment.It is not clear that the kind of deal under discussion would comply with the law, which calls for no more than 20 percent of TikTok or its parent company to be owned by people or companies in so-called foreign adversary countries, a list that includes China.The law also bars a new entity from working with ByteDance to operate its video-recommendation technology or creating a data-sharing agreement.Mr. Trump suggested last week that he might relax upcoming tariffs on China in exchange for the country’s support of a deal.TikTok has maintained that it is not for sale, in part, it says, because the Chinese government would block a deal. More

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      Chinese Auto Giants Dongfeng and Changan Are in Talks to Merge

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      The state-owned automakers, longtime joint venture partners of Ford and Nissan, might combine operations as Beijing consolidates its sprawling car sector.Two of China’s biggest state-owned automakers are in advanced discussions to merge, in a deal that would create a formidable manufacturer of cars and military vehicles but could also create problems for their American and Japanese partners.Dongfeng Motor and Changan Automobile have conducted detailed talks on how to combine their operations and told their foreign partners of their intentions, said two people with detailed knowledge of the discussions who were not authorized to comment.Although little known outside China, each company produces slightly more cars for its own brands and through joint ventures than global automakers like Mercedes-Benz or BMW. Dongfeng and Changan together make about 5 million cars a year — more than Ford Motor and almost as many as General Motors or Stellantis, the giant that owns Fiat, Chrysler and Peugeot.A merger of Dongfeng and Changan would represent a significant consolidation of China’s auto market, the world’s largest, and another sign of the country’s rapid embrace of electric vehicles. Both companies have considerably more factory capacity for producing gasoline-powered cars than they need.Beijing’s hope is that a combined company will be able to close excess factories for gasoline cars and become more successful in electric cars.China’s national government owns controlling stakes in Dongfeng and Changan. Dongfeng is a leading supplier of military vehicles to the People’s Liberation Army and Changan is a subsidiary of a Chinese military contractor, which could draw unwanted attention from the Trump administration to a new, larger military supplier and its joint venture partners.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      SoftBank to Buy Silicon Valley Chip Start-Up Ampere for $6.5 Billion

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      The move is a bet that Ampere’s chips can begin playing a significant role in data centers for creating artificial intelligence.SoftBank said on Wednesday that it had agreed to pay $6.5 billion for the Silicon Valley chip start-up Ampere Computing, doubling down on a bet that technology that originated in smartphones will come to dominate the world’s data centers.The deal also reflects the Japanese conglomerate’s belief that Ampere’s chips can begin to play a significant role in artificial intelligence, where Nvidia has reaped the most rewards so far.Ampere was founded eight years ago to sell chips for data centers based on technology from Arm Holdings, a British company that licenses chip designs that have powered nearly all mobile phones. SoftBank, which bought Arm in 2016, has been working to have chips based on Arm technology used more widely and for different tasks.“The future of artificial superintelligence requires breakthrough computing power,” Masayoshi Son, SoftBank’s chairman and chief executive, said in prepared remarks. “Ampere’s expertise in semiconductors and high-performance computing will help accelerate this vision, and deepens our commitment to A.I. innovation in the United States.”SoftBank said it would operate Ampere as a wholly owned subsidiary under its own name.The sale comes amid a flurry of deals and shifting alliances driven by a furious demand for the chips used to power A.I. applications such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT. SoftBank, in particular, has announced a series of transactions in a bid to play a bigger role in the field.In its splashiest move to date, Mr. Son joined President Trump in January to announce an initiative called Stargate, alongside Sam Altman, OpenAI’s chief, and Larry Ellison, chairman and founder of the software maker Oracle, which is Ampere’s largest investor and customer.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Oracle’s Role in TikTok’s Future Gets Capitol Hill Scrutiny

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      Top congressional aides met with Oracle on Tuesday to talk about TikTok, which faces a ban in the United States unless it is sold to a non-Chinese owner by early April.As questions continue to swirl around Washington about the future of TikTok, the name of one potential suitor for the popular video app keeps coming up: Oracle.On Tuesday, Oracle met with top aides on Capitol Hill to talk about how the U.S. tech giant, which processes and serves TikTok user data, plans to work with the Chinese-owned video app in the United States in the coming weeks, according to two people with knowledge of the meeting who weren’t authorized to speak publicly.The questions came as TikTok stares down an April 5 deadline from a federal law that prohibits its distribution in the country if it is not sold to a non-Chinese owner. TikTok’s owner is the Chinese internet company ByteDance, and its Chinese ties have raised questions about whether the app poses a national security threat in the United States.At Tuesday’s meeting, the aides also raised the topic of whether Oracle would be involved in running TikTok, after a recent Politico report that the company was in talks with the White House over a deal, one of the people said. The aides sought assurances from Oracle that any deal would comply with the law. The meeting, which was requested by aides, included staff members from the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, Speaker Mike Johnson’s office, and the House Energy and Commerce Committee, two people with knowledge of the meeting said.TikTok is facing yet another political scramble over its future. In January, President Trump delayed enforcement of the law that would ban TikTok from the United States, which passed Congress with bipartisan support and was upheld unanimously by the Supreme Court. Mr. Trump has promised to make a deal for the app to protect national security, and tapped Vice President JD Vance in February to find an arrangement to save it.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Deal Makers Restaff for the Trump Era

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      Clients increasingly want to know how to navigate shifting diplomatic alliances, unexpected conflicts and an unpredictable American administration.Centerview Partners, one of the financial world’s top independent investment banks, has long been known as a largely Democratic outpost. One of its leaders, Blair Effron, is among the most influential fund-raisers in Democratic politics, while a longtime counselor is Bob Rubin, the former Treasury secretary. Rahm Emanuel, the erstwhile Obama chief of staff, also worked for the firm.This week, Centerview took a step that was widely seen as a counterbalance: It hired Reince Priebus, the first White House chief of staff in the first Trump administration and a finance chairman of Trump’s second inauguration committee, as a senior adviser. In other words, someone who can help the bank and its blue-chip clients “speak Republican” better in the Trump era.It’s not the only firm looking.“This is a transactional administration,” Steve Lipin, the founder of Gladstone Place Partners, said on a panel at last week’s Tulane University Corporate Law Institute, a major gathering of mergers and acquisitions advisers.He added that a new step for an increasing number of transactions is to “email Howard Lutnick,” the Wall Street financier who is now Trump’s commerce secretary.Deal advisers have plumbed their Rolodexes for connections to anyone with pull in Trumpworld. (There are limits, one recruiting executive said: While relationships matter in this administration, the aim is to find someone who’s respected — but not “too MAGA.”)These new hires underscore how much the business of mergers and acquisitions has evolved beyond dispensing advice on capital structures and valuations. Clients increasingly want to know how to navigate a global landscape pockmarked with military conflicts, trade battles, oil shocks and political revolutions.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      The Future of News Looks Niche

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      The media entrepreneur Jessica Lessin chats with DealBook about the news landscape and her latest media bet.In 2013, Jessica Lessin, a reporter at The Wall Street Journal, left the paper to start a competing publication, The Information.A few years later, her fledgling newsroom had grown to nearly two dozen reporters and editors and booked more than $20 million in sales, as she revealed in a profile I wrote for The Times’s Sunday Business. She says she has since doubled her editorial staff and continued to stay profitable, with revenue growing 30 percent in 2024 over the previous year.But it’s her investments outside of The Information that are gaining attention these days.Her company Lessin Media has put money into Semafor, The Ankler, the former Business Insider editor Nicholas Carlson’s Dynamo, Kevin Delaney’s Charter Works and other titles at a time when the news business appears bleaker than before. Lessin, however, is optimistic.I caught up with the entrepreneur about her latest media bet, the tennis publication Racquet magazine, and what she thinks about the changing news landscape. This interview has been edited and condensed.This investment seems different from your others. How did you come to it?I actually got introduced to Racquet by a number of fans of the magazine. And it was like the weirdest experience, because I was reading the magazine, and then I wanted to buy, like, all the clothes in the magazine. I went to the website, and I wanted to buy all the merch. And they’re hosting an event at the U.S. Open. And I was like I want to go to that. And I want to read this great profile about the mental coach behind the world No. 1 tennis player.This sounds like it was something that just struck you personally. I assumed you’d be more focused on sales and market size and margin.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Paramount’s Shari Redstone Wants a Resolution on President Trump Lawsuit Ahead of Skydance Merger

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      Redstone, who controls Paramount, has been trying to close a merger with the Hollywood studio Skydance. President Trump’s lawsuit against CBS News is complicating matters.Shari Redstone, the controlling shareholder of the entertainment giant Paramount, delivered a crucial message to her board a few weeks ago.For months, Paramount’s lawyers had been jousting with representatives for President Trump, who had sued the company’s CBS News network over its segment on former Vice President Kamala Harris. Mr. Trump accused the network of deceptively editing the interview; CBS said Trump’s lawsuit was without merit.But when the board gathered this month, Ms. Redstone was clear: She was in favor of resolving the issue, two people familiar with the matter told DealBook’s Lauren Hirsch and The New York Times’s Ben Mullin.As Paramount executives weighed the best course of action, Ms. Redstone said she was in favor of moving forward in a way that would lead to some form of conclusion, including mediation.It was the first time that Ms. Redstone made her wishes known to the full board. Many at CBS News and “60 Minutes,” where Ms. Harris’s interview aired, strongly opposed a settlement.Further complicating the matter: The Federal Communications Commission is reviewing Paramount’s pending deal with Skydance. Some executives said that a settlement would smooth the way to closing the merger, even as others worried that a settlement could be interpreted as bribery for the F.C.C. to clear the Skydance deal. Mr. Trump, for his part, told reporters on Wednesday that the two were not linked.National Amusements, Paramount’s parent company, declined to comment, and Paramount has said that its legal battle with Mr. Trump is unrelated to its deal with Skydance.Ms. Redstone’s carefully written statement did not mention Paramount’s deal with Skydance — but it did underscore the fact that a pending multibillion-dollar lawsuit from the president made it difficult for Paramount to do business. She also said that she was removing herself from day-to-day discussions about the lawsuit.This week, The Times reported that Paramount had agreed to bring in a mediator.Any settlement could be perceived as the latest corporate concession to the White House, including Disney’s $15 million settlement in December and Meta’s $25 million settlement last month. The possibility of a settlement, which is likely to further embolden Mr. Trump’s crusade against the media, has been met with a strong backlash within the CBS ranks and outside the company.Though Ms. Redstone didn’t mention the Skydance deal in her remarks, people familiar with her thinking believe she’s focused on closing the deal.Paramount is also navigating the consequences of doing business under a retributive president. Beyond the Skydance deal, Mr. Trump has made clear his willingness to exact revenge when it comes to companies.“Corporations — particularly these days are often in the cross hairs of policymakers — and they have to navigate that,” Jill Fisch, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, told DealBook. “And that’s not easy.” More

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      Trump and Paramount Seek Mediator for CBS News Lawsuit

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      The move is another indicator that the two sides are exploring ways to resolve the case, over the editing of a “60 Minutes” interview, out of court.Lawyers for Paramount and President Trump have agreed to appoint a mediator in his $20 billion lawsuit against CBS, according to two people with knowledge of the decision.The move to bring in a mediator is another indicator that the two sides are trying to resolve the case, over the editing of a “60 Minutes” interview with Vice President Kamala Harris, out of court. A mediator could help them reach a settlement, but whether they will do so remains far from certain.Paramount declined to comment. Ed Paltzik, a lawyer for Mr. Trump, said in a statement: “President Trump will pursue this vital matter to its just and rightful conclusion.”Mr. Trump sued CBS days before the 2024 election, accusing the company of deceptively editing the interview with his Democratic opponent. He later amended the suit to include Paramount as a separate defendant.Paramount, CBS’s parent company, began settlement talks with Mr. Trump this year. Those talks have created discord at Paramount, with employees at CBS News strongly opposed to any settlement. Bill Owens, the executive producer of “60 Minutes,” told the show’s staff this month that he would not apologize as part of any prospective settlement after The New York Times reported that the settlement talks with Mr. Trump were underway.The lawsuit has complicated Paramount’s merger with Skydance, a deal that would unite an up-and-coming media start-up backed by the tech mogul Larry Ellison with the gilded Hollywood studio behind “The Godfather” and “Rosemary’s Baby.” The multibillion-dollar deal, struck last year, would end the Redstone family’s decades-long run atop Paramount and anoint Mr. Ellison and his son, David, in their stead.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More